


boring ecstasy

by orphan_account



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 01:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8182834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: when phandalin is destroyed, she is glad to see it go.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is 90% pure bullshit that will be obliterated by canon in short order. i dont give a shit. 
> 
> (title taken from [weird honey](https://elvisdepressedly.bandcamp.com/track/weird-honey) by elvis depressedly)
> 
> ____________________________ 
> 
> UPDATE: as of ep 51, this is all null and void. hope it was fun while it lasted!

Lucretia Andromache Iostern was not born to rot in a field in Phandalin, the wife of a drunkard who doesn’t love her. She was not born to bear eight children and protect none of them, to know nothing and never see farther than the eastern mountains. She was not born to pull in crops and haggle in markets and skin rabbits, to mend socks and skirts and bedclothes, to whittle her days away over a hearth, shoeless and pregnant. 

Her mother, unfortunately, disagrees. 

She is sixteen when she runs away from home. No one will miss her; she is one daughter of six, one child of eleven, and a troublemaker on top of it. She is unfit for marriage and unfit for childbearing; her mother with be glad and her father won’t even notice. 

(She has to go. There’s a boy from the village who she has known from birth, Gerould, who has started telling people he’s going to marry her. She cannot stomach the thought of belonging to someone, of being caged like that. It makes her ill.) 

So she runs. She packs a bag: everything she owns in this world fits in a potato sack. She has a handful of money and two changes of clothes and she walks and runs and hitches wagon rides. She plans to go to Wildewood, nearly a month’s ride from Phandalin (not far enough away, but it will have to do), to go to the school there. 

It ends up taking her more like three months to make it between rain and untrustworthy strangers and miles of walking, but it’s everything she’s dreamed. Its huge, with buildings of marble and gold, and real streets that are actually paved, and so many people, so many non-humans, to talk to and learn from.

She not sure what she wants to do. All she knows is that she _wants_ to know. She wants to read, to learn, to devour. She is curious about everything, about the magic that she has secretly stewarded over the years, about the world beyond her village, about artists and writers and musicians and thinkers and people who are like her. 

The problem with that is that universities in big cities cost gold. More gold than Lucretia has even seen in her life. A year’s tuition at Greathearth is nearly twenty thousand pieces, and she has less than a hundred in her bag. It took her years to save that much.

So she works. She’d picked up enough elven from merchants as a girl to translate passably, so she does that for a pittance when she can. She works at an inn, cooking the way her mother taught her to, despite all her protests. She goes down to the shadier districts and watches the children of women of brothels when she has spare time at night. It takes her more than a year of this, but she scrapes enough together to get a decent place to stay and to supplement the scholarship she hopes to get. 

She pays the application fee (a hefty three hundred gold) and manages to get in. She wastes no time; she has a distinct passion for transmutation, but in the end, divination with it’s promise of secret, ancient knowledge wins her over. 

So she works and she studies. She barely has time to sleep. She spends most of her waking hours (and several of her sleeping ones) in the library, absorbing scrolls and tomes and anything else she can get her hands on. She takes every class they’ll let her, takes in everything they’ll teach her. It’s four grueling years of hard work and little rest, but she graduates valedictorian, and is happier, briefly, than she’s ever been.

She gets a job at an organization that funds and conductus searches and returns of magical artifacts that have previously been lost to the world. She is an archiver, mainly, recording the findings and adventures of those who are out in the field doing the dirty work, saving money and considering going to graduate school or moving somewhere like Goldcliffe, where there are lots of wizards doing experimental magic and studying the way it props up the world they live in.

But then she meets Maureen. She’s petite, nearly a full foot shorter than Lucretia, with jet black hair and amber-green eyes that are set deep in her face. Lucretia gets the perturbing feeling that she can see right through her. She speaks with a quietness that demands your attention, that begs everyone in the room sit forward and watch carefully, lest they miss even a word. She is coy, where Lucretia is simply shy, steady where Lucretia is anxious. She is enamored. 

She’s dressed modestly, Lucretia will come to learn, though at the time it is the single most decadent set of robes she’s ever seen: they’re crushed velvet, black with a red outer coat, cinched in the middle with a belt fastened by a gently glowing chunk of smokey quartz. She’s there to commission the retrieval of a cursed sword that her grandfather had once possessed that she believes to have been stolen years before she was born, and could be anywhere on the continent by now. 

In that moment, standing there in the office, she falls in love with Maureen. She is given her assignment, and over the course of it, she finds out she’s the cleverest, funniest, strangest, most wonderful woman she’s ever had the pleasure of meeting. She’s studied and worldly and regal and everything that Lucretia aspired to be when she was ankle deep in freezing mud, searching for roots with her older sisters and daydreaming about a different life.

But there are several problems, the main one being that Maureen is married. And pregnant. Lucretia, though, is used to not getting what she wants. She is used to discipline and desire, she is accustomed to putting her work first and her emotions second. It’s easy to love Maureen, and easier to love her silently. She is not at risk of rejection, this way.

Lucretia has always been withdrawn, quiet, reserved, and always, there have been people willing to interpret this as mystery or regality. It’s from Maureen that she learns the true way to carry herself with poise, to command a room with nothing but a glance. She shadows her and as she tracks down the missing artifact for her, she begins to train herself out of being a shy farm girl and into being a formidable woman. 

After, they remain friends. Lucretia leaves her job and works independently, writing books about lost magical items and occasionally tracking them down herself, but mostly, she and Maureen work together. Maureen offers to bring her on to her experimentation with new ways to use magic (mainly, she is fascinated with new places to inhabit, like in the depths of the oceans or inside active volcanos or the far reaches of the cosmos) and Lucretia finds that she doesn’t want to turn her down. She’s a good grant writer, anyways. So they become partners, too.

She never wanted a family. Children make her uncomfortable, the idea of a spouse makes her queasy, but even she is charmed by Lucas. He is his mother’s child, for certain, with her eyes and her mouth and her hunger for discovery. Often, Maureen will put him in her arms unthinkingly, trading him between them as they work, and she comes to know his every sniffle and cry, to care for him, loathe as she is to say it, as a mother would. 

Lucas’ father is an officer in the Wildewood militia. She’s only met him once, in the early days of her acquaintance with Maureen. He’s a fine enough man, she supposes. Their marriage is an arranged one, as it sometimes goes among the upper class, but this is of little comfort to her. She schools herself to be utterly unaffected by the topic. It is not her business. 

But when he dies, shot by a loose magic missile in a firefight, she is hard pressed to be terribly sad. Maybe it’s cruel of her to be unconcerned with Lucas growing up without a father, but the truth is that Lucas has her, as selfish as a thought as it is. She can be parent to him if she must. She cares for him in ways she’s never done before, and it’s not as if his father was a moving force in his life. He’s barely walking, anyways; he won’t even remember him.

For her part, Maureen seems relatively unaffected, too. She cries a bit at the funeral, but says very little about him, and their work continues as usual. They don’t ever really talk about it, but not because it’s particularly painful, more because it’s such a small part of what becomes of them that it just doesn’t come up.

It takes a only a few more months for the first reports of conflict in the east to travel to them. Some group of wizards out there is agitating, saying they’re going to create objects that will solve all the problems that have been ignored by leaders everywhere, that they’re going to change to lives of every citizen of Faerun, but most people pay them little heed. 

(After she graduates, Lucretia keeps in the habit of drawing up monthly charts, mapping the stars and keeping track of what they have to tell her about what lies ahead. These wizards are not to be taken lightly, she fears.) 

Lucretia has never been much one for prayer or offerings; that sort of thing is for those uninterested in making their own fate, but Maureen is greatly comforted by Selûne’s shrine, especially then, and Lucretia isn’t inclined to keep her from that. They take the baby and pray that these Red Robes, whoever they are, are stopped, that the ever-mounting tension all around them is abated, that these magical items can be destroyed and balance restored to this world.

Of course, it’s all in vain. The unease goes on; the war doesn’t start in earnest for ten years after that, when the artifacts that were before only rumors are put in the hands of clan leaders and warlords and influencers. Battles and ransacking begins; bloodshed seems unavoidable, even removed as they are from the heat of the conflict, hundreds of miles away from the closest relic. 

It isn’t long before Maureen is at her wits end. She paces all day long, furious at her helplessness, her inability to aid the injured and dying the world over. She has always been kind, always said only half-jokingly that she is chaotic good, but her discomfort at the pain this war is causing is unexpected to both of them. Lucretia does her best to soothe her, but being more lawful neutral than good, it’s hard for her to know what to say. They have circular conversations nearly daily, until finally, it boils over.

“You’re the most powerful wizard I know, Lu, and not to brag but I’m a pretty close second--”

“What? The most powerful you know? Maureen that’s ridiculous--”

“And we can’t just let this keep happening, we can’t, it’s not _right_ , we could stop this, I know we can! We just need to find some people who will help us, and do some fundraising, and get a place to organize, and we can make some real changes!” 

Lucretia is about to argue, to say there is no possible way that they can save the world, that they are not cut out for this sort of thing and even if they were, it’s not their responsibility to play mother to the whole planet, but Maureen has turned to face her, and they’re less that a foot apart, and she’s gazing up at her with serious eyes, fists clenched. 

She never was able to tell Maureen no, it seemed. 

They throw themselves into abjuration, between canvasing for members and organizing meetings. The answer has to be there somewhere, there must be some manuscript, some scroll, anything at all that will tell them how to destroy these god forsaken items. If they can hunt them down and resist whatever awful affect they seem to have upon everyone in close proximity to them, it would be a step, but they would have no way to quarantine them before they’re destroyed, and certainly no way to protect their modest hideout until they come up with a way to do so. 

Lucretia starts to go gray at her temples. She’s not really self conscious about her looks, it’s more that gray hair implies age, implies she’s losing her edge, her grip, her ability to focus. She feels unbearably old, with Lucas almost thirteen and Maureen as lovely as ever. Lucas points it out one day and she flushes, damn her, unguarded as she is around them, but Maureen lays a hand on her arm and says she thinks it makes her look distinguished, trustworthy, that it’s fetching, even. She doesn’t feel bad about it after that.

They hole up in Maureen’s family manor on the edge of Wildewood and stay there, contacting nearly everyone they know between the two of them, wizards and warriors and merchants and lords who might be inclined to help them with whatever they have to offer. They have something of a revolving door of volunteers, people who can only give a little time or a little money, or people who intend to stay but get caught up in the desire to seek the relics out, who get captured by the thrall of the things, and leave them behind. 

They’re making frustratingly little progress until, by complete accident, an old acquaintance of Lucretia’s from her time as an archiver stumbles across something impossible. 

It’s called a voidfish, Leon tells her. He’s dedicated his life to artificing, unlike her, and has heard of this creature, though he thought to be entirely mythical or at least long extinct. He finds it in a lake in the center of a burned out town that none of them can remember existed, a place he ended up by accident after going off the road on his way to Meadowrunne. It is he who tells them they have to drink from the lake (a process they will much later refine, with somewhat unpleasant results) to remember the place. It’s exactly the boon they were looking for. 

They keep the thing in the lake and post up there, moving into homes that are long abandoned, crumbling and scorched, to keep an eye on the creature. It seems like a dark omen, but they soldier on. They stay there with what they come to think of as the founders: she, Maureen, Bain, Leon, Boyland, and Leeman begin seeking out all the documents they can find on the war, every scrap of paper, every book and battle plan and obituary, and feed it to the thing. 

And it grows. They aren’t sure where to put it, actually, to make sure it’s kept safe, and they don’t know what will happens if it dies, and they don’t know how to communicate with it, and all in all, it’s a huge gamble even relying on it. But they’re out of options. 

The moon base is an insane idea, but it is one of Maureen’s best. She and Lucretia are the only wizards among their band, and so it is up to them to create vessels to get them there, to create ways for life to be sustained, while the others find crews that can be assimilated into the order after the building there is done, and check out fantasy Ikea for sweet digs. 

They manage to get it done in about four years, going as fast as they can. Lucas is almost twenty one, and has taken to joining them at founder’s meetings, and they are better for it. He is like his mother, but there’s no denying that his youth sometimes gives him an edge. He has creative new ideas on how to infuse magic and science, how to obfuscate things in ways that aren’t so easily undone, how to take this from a strange, secret club to a full blown organization that actually stands to get something done, for Selûne’s sake. 

For the first time in a long, long time, she and Maureen get to rest. The base is being furnished, the voidfish is safe, the vast majority of the world has forgotten the relics even exist, and soon their first round of recruits will be sent here to be inducted into the inaugural group of Bureau members. 

So they chill the fuck out.

The truth, of course, is that Maureen is the great love of her life. She never tells her, but one of those first nights on the moon base she almost does, when they’re standing in what will one day be her office, looking out a large, domed window in the personal quarters tucked into a back room, drinking and arguing over the finer points of evocation. There is a natural lull, as conversations between close friends often have, and she looks over and finds Maureen looking at her, and starlight is bouncing over her features and she blinks slowly and the words begin to bubble in her throat, the awful truth pressing against the back of her lips and--

Someone knocks. She forgets who, now, but they have need of them, and they don’t really have a moment like that alone ever again. If she had known, then, that this would be the last time they would see each other, maybe things would have been different. Maybe she would have told her that she has been devoted to no one and nothing but her since she was thirty three and an idiot, that she would follow her into hell, that she learned how to be kind, loving, maternal, from her, that she wouldn’t trade a single moment with her for anything, even every artifact destroyed. 

But she doesn’t say any of that, and she never gets the chance.

Maureen dies. 

It is Lucretia’s understanding that it was an experiment in a new method to destroy relics that was improperly contained. It had been several months since they had seen each other, with Lucas and her working in an off-site lab, but they had written, she had never been far from her thoughts, and she cannot believe the news for so long. It seems each day she must remember that no missive will come in her familiar slanted, cramped writing, she will not show up breathless with discovery, no book full of annotations, no lists of bureaucrats her father’s cousin’s stepbrother once knew who might be sympathetic to their cause. 

She is not certain how to continue on.

She has no right, she knows, but for all the world she feels like a widow. She holes up in her quarters, allowing her employees and peers alike to think she is simply too busy with the fledgling Bureau to be seen. Mostly, she lies in bed, crying or sleeping. Occasionally, she is seized by a fit of fury or obsession and screams and tears at the walls, or rereads every letter, every missive Maureen ever sent her, pressing paper to her nose in hopes of catching one last note of dragonsblood and liquid amber, of sweat and smoke, of the scent of the woman she has loved her entire adult life and whom she will never lay eyes upon again. 

She doesn’t even have a grave to leave flowers on. Maybe it’s for the better; already she isn’t eating, for forgetting or for want of the gnawing pain of it. She allows herself to suffer. She knows, in her heart of hearts, that all of this is her fault. If she had told Maureen all those years ago to leave it, it isn’t their responsibility, but she couldn’t bear to do it, and now, and now, and _now_ \--

But it passes. The knife in her belly never goes away; she is forever on the very precipice of that consuming grief, but Maureen died for this and she will not allow it to be in vain. She will destroy every relic, she will prevent this ever happening again, if it is the last thing she does. She owes her that much. Truthfully, she owes her more. 

Lucas comes for the rights of remembrance. Lucretia is immovable, stoic, calm; she worked her hysterics out of her system before this. She no longer has the luxury of public grief. She has a responsibility to these people, to be the rock upon which they can lean. She will not fail them. 

After, she asks Lucas to come with her to her office. She wants to officially induct him, to have him here where she can watch him, where he won’t be alone, where he can flourish and be _safe_. She gives him the spiel she has given the others, that this is a vital part of maintaining the peace and prosperity of their world, that this is a place where they have a chance to make real change, to truly help people, that they can find like-minded individuals and feel belonging when they never have before.

“Of course, I understand that at times like these, it is difficult for us to gather our strength and be brave, but we need you now. More than ever, I should think.” She says calmly. Lucas has been quiet for most of this, hands shaking slightly. She doesn’t expect him to explode. 

“Don’t speak to me about bravery!” Lucas shrieks, and she hate it, but she recoils. “She did this for _you_!” He waves his hand around, and he’s wrong in his facts but right in his meaning; she gave up so much for this, for them, for her, and she did nothing, nothing, nothing to stop this. She grips the edge of her desk to steady herself. Suddenly, she is dizzy. 

“Regardless of what...what has transpired, the world is still in need of--” 

“‘What has transpired’!? My mother is dead!” And tears are streaming down his face, now, and she wants so badly to reach out to him, to tell him that she knows, oh god, she knows what it is to live in a world six shades darker without Maureen in it. She cannot fail him, for his sake and his mother’s. She has no idea what to say, and he knows it.

“She was in love with you.” He snarls so viciously that she almost believes him. “She waited for you. You _coward_.” And then he is turning on his heel, striding through the door before she can even argue. 

After that, relations are chilly between them. Accusations leveled in the heat of the moment are nothing she can hold him to, of course, but it’s clear he isn’t interested in any comfort she has to offer, and she leaves it at that. He continues his mother’s work, but it is quite clear that he is not one of them. An ally, certainly, but never a brother. 

(Two weeks later she receives a package with a note in his handwriting, “Bequeathed to you by my mother.” that holds two notebooks with early records of what would become the Bureau’s history, a few diagrams for magical items they never got around to inventing, a sweater of Lucretia’s Maureen had stolen more than fifteen years ago, and a locket inside of which was a photo she has forgotten existed of the two of them, still practically children, smiling together at Candlemas. She wears it even when she sleeps.) 

So she buries herself in her work. The gauntlet is the first one they hear rumors of, though it takes them a few months to track it down, and yet another month to find someone suitable to send planet-side in pursuit of it. 

And it goes terribly. Brian is taken by the thrall, and one of their newest recruits (who, for her part, is highly praised by Boyland) Killian, has to go after him. It is the first death she orders directly. It does not come easily. 

Three untrained, unproven idiots show up with a relic in hand, apparently unaffected by the terrible power of it, and tell her what she already knows: the town where she was born, Phandalin, is destroyed. There is nothing but a glassy crater left. 

Of course it is terrible, the death of so many innocents, but there is a cruel part of her that is relieved. Those people, that place, has been at her back for so long, has driven her to do so much. She doesn’t need it any more.

She has new ghosts.


End file.
